“ASSISTED dying is a class issue,” Liz Carr of Not Dead Yet told activists, journalists and MPs at a meeting in Parliament on Wednesday night.

“As long as we live in a world where certain groups of people are devalued — and we saw [in the welfare cuts debate] really powerfully the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor — it will never be safe to legalise assisted suicide, because no safeguard can protect against the abuse that will happen.”

Labour MP Diane Abbott hosted the meeting, jointly organised by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) and the Morning Star, explaining she opposed the assisted dying Bill “because I know what people are like, and I know what institutions are like.”

She had seen how unscrupulous some relatives could be when questions of money are involved, and was alert to the likelihood that an overstretched NHS would see people pushed towards ending their lives if that became an option.

Coercion was often almost impossible to detect, she warned, and could include what people don’t say as well as what they do — such as remaining silent when a patient worries they are a burden on family or society. 

And it was no accident that black MPs overwhelmingly opposed assisted dying legislation — “if anybody is assisted to commit suicide, it’ll be people that look like us.”

Palliative care consultant Dr Jamilla Hussein said she was not opposed in principle, but working with racialised communities she found the common response to the Bill was “‘we’re scared that this will be forced on us’.”

Experiences of systematic discrimination during Covid had led to deep distrust of giving state institutions power over their lives and deaths.

Baroness Jane Campbell of Not Dead Yet spoke of the othering of disabled people and the assumption that they are “better off dead” — leading to many able-bodied people assuming they would opt to die if they developed a serious disability, when with time most come to appreciate their lives if supported to do so.

DPAC’s Ellen Clifford explained how Kim Leadbeater MP’s Bill Committee had rejected almost every amendment brought to protect vulnerable groups, while Barbara Roberts of Disability Labour and the Socialist Health Association said attacks on disabled people’s living standards would drive them to despairing of life — at which point institutions with low regard for disabled people’s contributions to society would facilitate ending it.

“No witnesses from disabled people’s organisations, such as Inclusion London nor campaign groups such as DPAC have been called upon to give evidence,” Ms Roberts pointed out.

Former PCS vice-president John McInally detailed the loosening of criteria in countries where it had been legalised, and stressed the importance for socialists of prioritising collective rights, including safeguarding the right to life of vulnerable groups, over an individualist “right to die.”

“Never trust a liberal on a moral crusade,” he warned, pointing to the blasé rejection of safeguard after safeguard by the Bill Committee.

The Bill will return to Parliament for its third reading in late April or May.